


Yellow Eyes

by titania522



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post MJ, birthday drabble, buttercup - Freeform, everlark, growing together, norbertsmom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:50:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titania522/pseuds/titania522
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buttercup is more than just a bystander as Katniss slowly comes back to life after her return to District 12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Norberts_Mom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norberts_Mom/gifts).



> Written for Norbertsmom's birthday. One of the kindest, most supportive people in the fandom, I am happy she's my friend. Her messages make so many people happy. She is a positive force and a wonderful person.

**Yellow Eyes**

 

**I.**

 

I wake that next morning to dull, yellow eyes staring down at me.  I ache, which feels much more acute after months of listlessness and perfect indifference to the world.  I still can’t imagine what it was like for Buttercup to trek across the forests that separated District 13 from 12 but here he is.  He comes for Prim but finds me instead and though I understand his disappointment, I nevertheless have to admire the determination that is required for a cat to travel alone this far. I can identify with that. I would have crawled across all of Panem on my hands and knees if I knew it would bring her back to me.

 

**II.**

 

I can’t stand his fur - knotted and filthy from exposure to the elements. Nor can I ignore the thorns in his paws, the way he licks the angry red swelling that begins to form around the bits of trapped wood.  He lets me clean the wounds with no protests but the thorns are making him suffer and it’s more than I can bear.  He’s mewling – but what I really hear is Prim crying quietly in the night in our old home in the Seam, perhaps from hunger or some disappointment. It spears me through my chest, down to the bottom of my numb soul. Soon he is on my lap and I’m sobbing into his matted fur.  We don’t speak anymore but he is my comfort now.

 

**III.**

 

Peeta brings fresh bread each day and we eat, together with Greasy Sae and her little granddaughter, who will grow into a woman but never understand much more than a small child.  I feed Buttercup all my bacon while I pick at the warm, soft loaf. I know it must taste good but I am not at a place where I can differentiate tastes or pleasure. The orange tabby stands in for me, eating the bacon voraciously, with a cat’s version of gusto, purring and rubbing against my leg when he is done.  I wonder at that moment if one day, I will remember the pleasure of anything again.

 

 

**IV.**

 

I can speak to my mother now.  Buttercup sits on my lap, the warmth of his feline body seeping deep into my belly, giving me courage as my mother apologizes for not having the fortitude to be with me. She begs me to forgive her limits. The old Katniss, the one who loved spring and hunting in the woods would have resented her for her weakness. She would have only tolerated her or perhaps even discounted her existence altogether. But now there is me, a half fire-mutt, with no wings, no fire and no sister.  And so I forgive her because her shortcomings have become my own.

 

**V.**

 

I look up at Peeta, whose blue eyes, now clear of madness, flit shyly away from mine.  He’s decided to cook today, which is a treat for Greasy Sae, who can now turn her entire attention to her granddaughter.   He sets the roast on the counter, carving away at the fat and dangling it near the ground.  The cat, knowing this is all for his benefit, leaps faithlessly away from me, abandoning his spot between my legs to snatch the treat from Peeta’s hand.  He chews triumphantly, turning his yellow eyes upwards in expectation of another morsel. Peeta holds my gaze as he stokes the shiny fur, a shy smile hovering at the edge of his lips.  Without warning, the smells of the kitchen hit me like a sea wave, the sensations choking me with their intensity. Hunger jabs at me and pierces my belly, together with a desire to taste everything. It sends a thrill through my veins and I feel like I’ve stepped closer in the direction of something bright.

 

**VI.**

 

We sit on the steps of my house in the evening, Buttercup circling my legs before settling down on my feet.  Peeta describes his garden, the way he has broken ground and prepared the seeds for planting. He’s excited and animated, which leaves me in awe. Hardy, like the dandelions in the meadow, he keeps springing up after each disappointment, each set-back, ready to confront another spring, another season.  It gives me courage and makes me grateful for surviving, instead of simply tolerating it as an unfortunate consequence of the events of my life.  Wanting...he does not simply endure life but wants something from it, demands it and makes things happens so that his desires are fulfilled. When I clasp his hand and hold it in mine, I do it with the same spirit - with _wanting_ , demanding that life give something back to me also.  

 

**VII.**

 

Buttercup warms my feet as he always does, guarding against the terrors that rip through the night.  There is more space at the foot of the bed, especially after Peeta removes his prosthetic.  His strong arms hold me with his usual steadiness while I tremble, not from the vestiges of a vivid nightmare, but from a vague and urgent need.  He strokes me, and I lean into him, seeking out his heat.  I don’t warn the cat because the moment of our surrender sneaks up on both of us all at once, like almost everything else that has to do with Peeta – omnipresent but just beneath the level of consciousness.  When all is said and done, I hear the cat purr from his perch as sentinel and guardian, pointed ears twitching, those yellow, gem-like eyes facing outwards into the inky-black darkness.  Now there is a pair of us to watch, like two fumbling, new-born puppies. But Buttercup seems to accept this special burden as a natural state of affairs, something that, probably to his feline mind, would have happened anyway.

 

 

 

 


End file.
